The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (6 page)

The next day I went to school. He of course wasn’t there because he had already graduated. Katie wasn’t there, either. When I got home from school, my mother told me Bob had called five times. I didn’t return his calls. During that evening he kept calling. I didn’t take his calls. I didn’t take his calls for two days. Finally I agreed to talk to him. I could tell he was guilty as a henhouse fox and afraid he would lose me, which was probably why he denied doing “anything” with Ms. Thang in spite of being interrogated by me no less than 10 times a day. I never believed him, but I remained hopelessly in love with him. Two years later, in college, I agreed to marry him.

  •  •  •  

Bob and I hadn’t lived together while we were dating. Even when we were in college together we had separate apartments or houses with our own roommates. I’d wanted to marry Bob since I was 17, like pioneer stock apparently, so waiting years was absolute torture. He was the first man I had sex with,
any
kind of sex, and unfortunately for both of us, intercourse only occurred a handful of times before we married when I was 20.

It took me
forever
to put out the first time. My mother had me convinced that girls who have sex before marriage were whores. True, I knew several whores who later in life became real whores. In fact one of them was a bridesmaid in my wedding and the other one taught me how to give a blowjob. She, Paula, later became a fairly well-known DC whore who made the news and became part of a genuine Capitol Hill scandal! I opted to not be a “real” whore, but instead swung the pendulum way too far to the other side. Poor Bob.

Although we had fornicated several times, we had never had “it’s okay to have sex now” sex. It seemed after all those years of withheld, pent-up sexual urges, the honeymoon would have turned out to be a crazy “anything goes” romantic free-for-all . . . it seemed.

Bob wanted a sailboat, one of those small ones called a Sunfish. So he pled his case that if we didn’t spend much on our honeymoon we could afford both a honeymoon
and
a sailboat. This seemed fine to me; I just wanted to go to a place that had an ocean—I’d never seen an ocean! I’d envisioned palm trees, white sand beaches, and moonlit nights for my first sexual interlude as a wife instead of a whore.

We chose exotic Galveston, Texas, as our honeymoon destination, mostly because it had an ocean and it was close enough to drive to. There was no Internet in 1971 and apparently no vacation pamphlets. Bob and I had bought a pinky-mauve-colored Rambler station wagon at a garage sale for $55. She was very ugly and as old as the price tag, but she was only $55! She was our first joint purchase.

After the wedding we spent our first night as man and wife in Wichita at the Howard Johnson’s, where Bob had spent summers life guarding. When we got to the room, he went outside for a cigarette, and I called my dad.

“What are you doing?” I lamely inquired.

“Um, we’re playing bridge. What are
you
doing calling me on your honeymoon?” asked the other Mr. Alley.

“Nothin’, just sitting here.”

God help me! I was barely 20, going on barely 14, perhaps one of the most modest, unprepared, geeky, daddy’s girls anyone has ever encountered.

“You have a good time, Kirstie Lou, you’re married now, go find your husband.”

And that’s how my dad broke up with me—on the phone.

The word “husband,” which I’d been dying to hear for years, suddenly sounded like “go find the only person you’re free to have sex with for the rest of your life.” It was way too much for me to absorb. We were on our own, and there were no more excuses or reasons I couldn’t be Bob’s sex slave. I was panicking like a caged monkey. See, the thing is, Bob was really good at sex, well endowed, generous, and very capable in the bed. I, on the other hand, was the girl who’d spent four years staving off sex lest I become my mother’s worst nightmare, a whore. I went to the Howard Johnson’s front desk to buy candy bars. It took a long time to pay for them—when I returned to the room Bob was asleep. Phew!

The “phew” was short-lived. The next morning Bob confessed he had indeed messed around with Ms. NYC at his senior party. I cried . . . a lot. And screamed . . . a lot . . . as he had lied about it for the past two years. But I pulled myself together and decided to take the high road.

Four hours later, we drove to our honeymoon retreat in Galveston. It was dark by the time we arrived. I recall the lovemaking was lovely, the type young, modest newlyweds engage in. Sweet, satisfying, lovely lovemaking.

After we made love I locked myself in the bathroom and called my dad from the wall phone next to the toilet.

“Hi, Daddy, what are you doing?”

He chuckled, “Playing bridge.”

“Oh,” I said, “I miss playing bridge.”

“How’s Galveston?” Daddy asked.

“I don’t know, it’s dark, I can’t see anything.”

“How’s your husband?” He asked AGAIN, as if to remind me he was no longer the only man in my life.

“He’s good, he’s sleeping. Who’s your bridge partner?” I pathetically asked.

“Norma.”

“Yeah, she’s good but not as good as me . . . heeheehee . . . bet you wish I was there . . . hahaha . . . what do you have for snacks?”

“Kirstie Lou, go back to Bob. I’ll see you when you come home.”

As final as that! Now my dad had not only broken up with me, he was refusing to talk to me. I’d never before or since felt that betrayed and alone. Now I had been betrayed by two men.

When we woke up the next morning I rallied myself, and I’m pretty sure I instigated morning sex. Now that the other man in my life abandoned me, I was spurred onward to make a new life for myself as Bob’s wife. I threw open the drapes with a flourish to take my first glimpse of a real live Hawaiianesque honeymoon ocean.

Ugh—the Galveston ocean looked like a lake. It had brownish, brackish water. No palm trees, no blue skies, no chicks in hula skirts, not even bikinis. The beach was not white or pristine. In the light you could see that the white bathrobes and towels were tinged with the gray-brown color of the ocean water.

My memory of my honeymoon goes black from that point; I truly can’t remember another moment. The mind is like that, I think. When something is just too awful, it closes down to protect you from catching on fire.

I do remember our drive home in Rosie, the name we had christened our pink $55 Rambler station wagon. Rosie ran pretty well but had no air conditioner. Galveston in June, and all 11 other months, is hot as hell and so humid that your clothes stick to your skin. On this June day it was approximately 105 degrees. The sweltering heat was unfathomable as we drove along in our pink coffin. Bob and I stopped at a roadside watermelon stand and bought three ice-cold watermelons. Bob had the guy cut one of them right down the middle. We positioned the cut half of the watermelon between us on the seat of the Rambler. As we drove along we scooped icy cold melon with tiny Dixie cups and slurped it to stay alive.

The drive from Galveston to Kansas is flat, brown, boring, and uneventful. Bob and I made up songs to keep ourselves amused. My favorite was “Dead Dogs and Tires,” as there were several of each along the route, with the occasional dead armadillo. Bob has a very clever, acute sense of humor. He could always make me laugh until I cried. He was teasing me about how sad it was that all we had to return home to was a new sailboat after spending an awesome honeymoon in Hawaii.

Drenched with sweat, sticky from watermelon juice up to our elbows, we cruised along singing, already fairly bored of our “alone” time. Then suddenly, there they were! Two hitchhikers! They were undoubtedly stranded because their car had broken down in the godforsaken heat, although we saw no car.
My, they must have walked miles in the wretched sun, they clearly needed some Dixie cups of watermelon and a lift to the nearest gas station
, I thought.

“STOP!!” I screamed at Bob. “Stop the car! Come on Bob, if it was us out there, we would need help, too!”

It was 1971, or ’72, or—hell, I can’t remember. The point is, hitchhiking and hippies were the order of the day! I knew this because I’d seen news footage of Haight-Ashbury.

They came running up to the car and hopped in.

“Thank you, thank you,” the weary walkabouts gushed. I noticed two things: neither of them had any teeth, and they had the distinct air of having escaped from a mental institution.

“Where you headed?” my friendly husband asked.

“Wherever you are!!! We ain’t got no place to go—guess you’re stuck with us!”

Although I was the opposite of street smart, savvy, or forensically trained, it was clear we were going to be murdered.

Bob and I survived our honeymoon and moved back into my parents’ house for the summer to play bridge. In July we drove to Manhattan, Kansas, to find a place to live. That’s where Bob would study veterinary medicine and where I would find a job.

College towns are infamous for nonexistent low-paying part-time jobs. They are also known for high-priced, limited housing.

Because of our vast array of pets, horses, dogs, cats, snakes, and raccoons, Bob and I quickly nixed the city life in lieu of country living. We found an 1865 stone farmhouse in Olsberg, Kansas, owned by a Mrs. Mildred Nelson.

Mildred was probably in her eighties back then and probably the most decent, sweet, generous person I’ve ever met. She could see we were a young, struggling couple, so she asked, “Would sixty-five dollars a month seem fair to you?”

The stone farmhouse had a living room, a huge dining room, a kitchen, a sitting room, two upstairs bedrooms, and one downstairs bathroom. On one side of the kitchen was a stove, a refrigerator, and counters with a sink. On the other side of the kitchen was a cabinet and a bathroom sink. The claw-foot tub and commode were behind a door by the kitchen/bathroom sink.

The house was heated by a wood-burning stove and a gas heater in the living room. I’m pretty sure it was the first gas heater ever invented.

Mildred told us that before we arrived in the fall she would have the $65-a-month stone house spruced up. I should mention, it was a $65-a-month stone house sitting in the middle of 80 acres of land! It had barns, stables, and outbuildings. All of it just for us. The big yard was lined with a Victorian iron fence butted up against 10-foot-tall ancient lilac bushes. The smell of newly mown hay and lilacs filled the air of Mildred’s house, once inhabited by Mildred and her husband, Peter.

Mildred and Peter could not have children but were happily married until his passing, whereupon Mildred moved into town (which was a quarter mile from the farmhouse, with a population of 108). Of course Olsberg’s population of 108 didn’t all live “in town,” and a few had died that year so how accurate the census was remained a mystery. When a baby was born in Olsberg, Kansas, Bob and I would joke about running out with a bucket of paint and changing the sign to 109.

We gave Mildred our deposit on the stone farmhouse—$20—and went to the “big” city, Manhattan, Kansas, to find me a job. I thought the ad said “receptionist at a dry cleaners,” but that quickly shifted to “laundry worker in a sweatshop” where the average temperature was 105.

I took the job. I would start in September.

Bob and I spent the rest of the summer playing bridge, riding horses, sailing, and loving each other like love stories in the movies. The summer of our first year of marriage proved to be magical.

When we arrived at the stone house with our stuff that fall in Olsberg, Mildred met us at the door. So sweetly she said, “Welcome to your first home. I hope my choices of wallpaper are suitable for you.” Every room had been freshly painted and sweetly wallpapered with delicate, old-fashioned pristine papers. Each room a different paper that collectively made the 19th-century home look like a dollhouse. It was breathtaking. The only thing Mildred had asked me when we first rented the house was what colors I preferred. I had told her pale yellow, pink, green, and lavender. Each room was clean, soft, welcoming, and the perfect setting to become “fancy,” something I had always wanted to be.

I will never forget how Bob looked standing there on the porch to our new “mansion.” It was evident I had married the man of my dreams and probably every other girl’s. God! Life was about to explode into our glory days!!

I began by making our house “fancy.” My grandmother had passed away and left me all of her antique furniture: a modest but lovely dining room set, table, eight chairs, a sideboard, a hutch, and an antique six-foot-tall RCA Victor radio/record player. We went to an estate sale and bought furniture for the living room. We hit pay dirt, this 1940s four-piece set of sofa, love seat, and two comfortably worn burgundy velvet chairs. We were getting fancier by the day. Bob and I would lug all the treasures in a borrowed truck.

The stone house didn’t have pretty hardwood floors, so when we put our new finds atop the bland worn-out carpeting it looked shabby, not shabby chic, just shabby. I started collecting carpet remnants from the trash bins in Manhattan, Kansas, carpet stores. It was the 1970s, baby, and patchwork was king. We took all the multicolored, multitextured pieces and fashioned them into a carpeted patchwork quilt floor. The carpet of course was all brand new, just in pieces. We cut them in shapes—squares, rectangles, and triangles. When we were done it gave a groovy, mod look to our 1860s dollhouse—the perfect blend of antique and modern.

There were no window treatments in our house, but my mom had bought me an early birthday present of fabric and fringe. It took several days, but I made curtains for each window. Bob stayed busy mowing, weeding, and edging.

There were plenty of wildflowers to fill Ball jars and vases. We had finally hit the ranks of “fancy.” We were the fanciest self-made newlyweds I’d seen or known. While our friends starved, living in expensive, overpriced apartments in the city, we flourished on our 80-acre country estate. Married life was not only nirvana, it was supremely fancy.

On one September morning, Bob and I drove into the city for his first day of vet school and my first day at the laundry. Rosie was running beautifully, our lives were in order, and everything was going as planned. I kissed my handsome husband good-bye, and we went off on our separate ways.